July 6, 1991

From June 21 to July 2, the Food and Drug Administration churned out dozens of proposals intended to solve problems with food-ingredient labeling that have confounded the agency for as long as 25 years. The food agency also proposed voluntary nutrition-labeling guidelines for fresh fish, fruits and vegetables, and is working on mandatory nutrition labeling for all packaged foods.

A decadelong effort to improve New York City's notoriously inaccurate and unfair property-tax system has failed, largely because the city's assessors are not accurately measuring the market value of houses, a study by The New York Times shows. The city's tax assessors make significant errors in estimating the value of nearly half the one- , two- and three-family houses in New York, the study found. Those errors have undercut the city's attempt to correct a property-tax system that has historically imposed the heaviest burden on those least able to pay.

Chancellor Helmut Kohl of Germany urged President Mikhail S. Gorbachev today to provide concrete assurances of political and economic reform when he approaches Western leaders for assistance later this month. The Soviet President, for his part, pointed to the strife in Yugoslavia "as a lesson and a warning" that his commitment to a united and renewed Soviet Union was the only path. Serving up a graphic illustration of the problem facing Mr. Gorbachev, groups of Ukrainian nationalists waved protest banners at the airport and in Kiev, capital of the Soviet Ukraine.

Financial regulators in seven countries today seized control of a private banking empire rooted in the Middle East whose network operates in 69 countries and owns two American banks, including a large institution in Washington. The seizure of Bank of Credit and Commerce International, whose assets of $20 billion were regulated chiefly here and in Europe, came today after what the Bank of England described as widespread fraud over a period of years. "It is large, it is extensive and it's probably been going on for some time," Robin Leigh-Pemberton, governor of the Bank of England, said when asked about the dimensions of the activities.

In an effort to bring about a full cease-fire, Yugoslavia's central Government said today that the breakaway republic of Slovenia could control the border posts that it set up after declaring independence last week, but only if Slovenia agreed to turn over customs revenues to the federal Government. The offer was conveyed to the Slovenian leadership by Yugoslavia's collective presidency, which includes representatives of the nation's six republics and two autonomous provinces. It is aimed at preventing new outbursts of the fighting that began last week when the army sent tanks to Slovenia to regain control of the republic's frontiers.